Clovis, California’s Jade Avedisian is no stranger to success or to defying stereotypes. In 2023, she became the first woman to ever win a national midget championship, winning five races on her way to becoming the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Champion. That same year, she became the first woman to finish on the podium during a Chili Bowl preliminary race and then became one of two women ever to make the Chili Bowl feature, ultimately finishing 13th. In October 2023, she signed a multi-year development deal with TRD and added some asphalt races to her schedule for 2024. She adapted quickly, winning in just her second start at Hicky Motor Speedway with Donnie Wilson Motorsports. In 2025, she continued that march, becoming the first woman to win a CARS Tour event at New River All American Speedway in March.
This journey led Jade to Du Quoin, Illinois, this weekend for her ARCA Menards Series debut, fittingly on dirt. She acclimated quickly, posting the sixth fastest lap in practice and qualifying seventh, sharing the fourth row with another promising female in Isabella Robusto. By lap twenty-five, Avedisian had worked her way into the top five, even duking it out with Brenden Queen, who would go on to win the race. Just before lap seventy, her #25 Yahoo! Camry suffered a flat tire that put her multiple laps down, and on lap seventy, she got a bit high and backed it into the turn four fence, ending her night.
A tough end to a promising night for the young driver. I had a chance to talk to her after the race, asking her about the tire issue and ultimately how she felt about the night as a whole. “Yeah, I’m not sure what cut it, but something cut it. That put a damper on our night, and then I kind of made it worse there putting it in the fence off of four.” before adding “There’s some stuff I can take away and get better, but at the end of the day I just can’t make those mistakes and make my night worse.”. Jade will be back in a Venturini ARCA car for the ARCA West race at Las Vegas on October 10th. I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about her in 2026.